Caroline Bock attacks bullying in 'LIE'

When author Caroline Bock read about the 2008 killing of Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue -- an Ecuadorean immigrant randomly attacked by local teenagers -- she was so incensed that she used the crime as the basis of her first novel.

"LIE" (St. Martin's Griffin, $9.99 paper) is written in the voices of 10 characters, five teens and five adults. Bock says the book mirrors "just the very broad stroke" of Lucero's attack -- a group of teens go out for "fun" to beat up Hispanics. From there, she created fictional characters and a setting that could be anywhere on Long Island.

While "LIE" has been promoted as a young adult novel, Bock, 48, says she didn't write it for a particular age group. "I just wrote it. When I eventually found an agent to represent it, she said, 'It's a YA book.' I hope kids read it; I hope adults read it."

Bock spoke with Newsday at a diner near her home in Old Bethpage.

How did this book come about?

I'm a real news junkie. You are talking to the person who still reads three newspapers a day, as well as half a dozen online media sites, as well as watching Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper every night. I saw the story about Marcelo Lucero; at the same time, I saw stories about incidents in Brooklyn and Pennsylvania. I started thinking, 'How could this happen here in the 21st century?' I was in a novel-writing workshop at the City College of New York, and I finished the first draft in my workshop.

We get the perspectives of many characters, but never that of Jimmy Seeger, ringleader of the attack. Why?

What I found more interesting was why people follow bullies. By the end of the book, you have a really good picture of Jimmy and his influence. Hopefully people will read this book and think, "What would I do? Would I step forward and tell the truth, or would I follow the rest of the community and do nothing? Or lie, straight out?" I hope it starts that conversation about bullying -- and even more than that, about race in our society -- that I don't think a lot of people have out loud. Here, kids are judging two brothers by the color of their skin. They didn't know who they were; they were just looking to hurt somebody.

Did you talk to any of the participants in the Lucero attack?

I didn't want to. I wanted my own story.

Why did you call the book "LIE"?

It obviously has two meanings on Long Island. The big question in the book is, "Can you step forward and tell the truth or not?" One of the major metaphors in the book is the Long Island Expressway. The characters try to escape their group of friends . . . they go east, they get to the end of the Expressway. It's the end of possibilities for these characters.